Guide to Scoring Baseball -- Ninth Inning

Christopher Swingley

Top of the ninth

acevedo substitution

It's the top of the ninth and with the Cardinals leading 6 -
3, the Cubs are down to their final three outs. The Cardinals
start the inning with pitcher Juan Acevedo, replacing John
Frascatore who got the final two outs in the eighth inning. We
write Juan Acevedo in the pitcher's box below
Frascatore, put a 9 in the inning column, and draw a
solid line at the top of the box of the first Cub batter, Sammy
Sosa. Small x's on the ends of the line make the
pitching change more obvious.

sosa - hill

The first batter is Sammy Sosa, who hasn't hit any home runs
in the game, and has thus far failed to match McGwire. Acevedo
gets to a count of 2 - 2, Sammy fouls off the fifth pitch, and then
swings and misses at a pitch down at his shoes. Strikeout
swinging. Sosa is out with a K and we indicate the
out with a circled 1.

Next up is big Glenallen Hill, 1 for 3 on the day with a
single in his last at-bat in the seventh inning. In this at-bat,
he swings at the first pitch from Acevedo, driving it to the wall
in alley in left center field. The center fielder sprints to the
ball and throws in to third. Hill is in scoring position at second
base, his team down by three runs.

Hill gets a double, so we draw a line from home to second,
putting a small tail at second base to show his progress on the
basepaths. We circle the 2B for the
double.

gaetti - merced

Gary Gaetti stands in with a man in scoring position at
second base. Down by three runs, Gaetti needs to get on-base.
He's had a good day, 2 - 3 with a walk and a strikeout. His first
hit was an RBI single in the first inning. Like Hill, he swings at
the first pitch, and hits it to left field where it's caught by
J.D. Drew. Not a good effort from Gaetti at all. He should have
taken at least one pitch (even a strike) in an effort to get on
base. Instead, it's a completely unproductive out. The Cubs are
now down to their last out.

Hill is still standing at second base, so we don't need to
write anything in his box. Gaetti's at-bat shows F7
and a 2 with a circle around it in the lower left of
his box for the second out.

merced substitution

Jim Riggleman's last move is to replace second baseman Jason
Maxwell with pinch hitter Orlando Merced. We don't have any room
left on the scorecard after all the substitutions in the seventh
position on the lineup card, so we write Orlando
Merced in the margins and put (ph / 9) to
indicate when he came into the game. We also draw a vertical line
along the left side of Merced's at-bat box with x's at
the ends to make it clear that this at-bat belongs to Merced, not
Maxwell. We could also write Merced's name in one of the empty
lineup positions at the bottom of the scorecard, but I think it's
actually clearer in the margins. If you're going to total up every
player's statistics to build a box score, it's probably better to
write him in at the bottom so you can use the statistics columns on
the right side of the card.

Merced seems to understand the situation, and works the
count full before fouling off the sixth pitch from Acevedo. He
hits the seventh pitch to the third baseman, who rifles the ball to
McGwire at first for the final out of the game.

The play is scored 5-3, and we indicate the
final out with a circled 3.

Final score, Cardinals 6, Cubs 3.
I will detail how we fill out the rest of the scorecard in the next
section, but the final totals follow. The Cubs got 3
runs, 12 hits and left a whopping 13 men
on base. There were 0 Cardinal errors. The Cardinals
scored 6 runs on 5 hits, and left
3 men on base. The Cubs committed 1
error.